[Sca-cooks] 2013 Happy Holidays and Santa Stuff

[Patricia Dunham]

OK, 8-)

FOOD - was pretty much same-old, same-old Turkey-our-way, with our usual single guest. Had a good day, ending with the Doctor Xmas Special, of course.

Plain 8-hr kosher salt brine (with THE plainest crouton spice packet from Franz!) for a Diestel (Sonora CA) "Naturally Range Grown" 14-#er.

Stuffing is also plain plain plain, except for the home-made turkey stock. does have onion, no celery (allergy?), large-chopped apple. Stuffing is for flavoring, nobody eats it and it comes out within 5 minutes of the bird coming out of the oven!

ROAST POTATOES under the bird. No mashed, no gravy -- who needs it when the potato chunks have stewed in fresh juice and stock for the whole 3-4 hours!!! Practically our favorite thing of the whole meal!

Plain roast sweet potato. Closed small roasting dishes get you that marvelous butter-caramel on the bottom if all goes well!

NEW/EXPERIMENTAL for this year: Laura Calder's Roasted (Butternut) Squash, http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/laura-calder/roasted-squash.html  which really works quite nicely. Yeah, sweet potato AND squash, but they were both great!

Broccoli & sweet corn, my home-made Cranberry sauce (tangerine juice & zest, Major Grey's as part of the "sweet"), the usual little stuff (black olives, baby carrots, celery stix)

Home-made semi-sourdough loaf bread, and beef hand-pies and KFC wedges for the pickiest-eater-of-all. Well, he does eat his broccoli, small blessings!

We don't do pies for some reason, but cookies instead: the family sugar cookies, Himself's shortbread, and holiday "not-a-sponge-cake" cake that goes in immediately the turkey comes out of the oven! well, immediately after the meat pies are done, which go in between the turkey and the un-sponge-cake, what with clearing off turkey-n-potatoes steam and cranking up the temp for pastry, then back down again for the cake...  

I made ATK's "Fairy Gingerbread" again -- glorious stuff; and an experimental thumbprint cooky that didn't ... work well enough to justify the calories. (Sandra Lee's New York Cheesecake thumbprints, I know!!!, but somebody on-line said he and his girlfriend had tried it and it worked & was good. I didn't have graham crackers, so made a batch of shortbread for crumbs. actually the cooky-body worked great structurally, but it came out WAAAYYY too sweet. the alleged  cheesecake filling turned out flat and blah however! I did a couple with lemon curd and they were interesting, but again, the sweetness of the body was WAY too much!) This year the candy bowl was all Dove, no M&Ms. (The peanut is OK, the Dark with Almond is GREAT -- actual noticeable chunks of almond.) That's an improvement! And I got a LOT of Mozart marzipan in my stocking.

PREZZIES - since The Last Heiatt got delayed AGAIN!, Himself found me a copy of Brears' All the King's Cooks. 

AFTERS - Stock pot started during the Doctor, 8-)  It's been waiting in the fridge for a couple of days now, gelled up like  60; but we have to empty, sort & re-pack the whole frig-freezer to make room for another 6-8 cups of stock!!! We just need to use more at other times of the year than the winter holidays, yeah, that's it! 8-)

So, that's the same-old, same-old from here; looking forward to hearing about more books & stuff that I can put on prezzie lists for next year!
chimene et al


On Dec 29, 2013, at 4:59 PM, Johnna Holloway wrote:

> The List has been rather quiet again this year. Maybe everyone is over on Facebook.
> I am reminded yet again that We used to celebrate and share what we were served and ate over the holidays.
> To get that ball rolling, we had ham for Christmas lunch in lieu of me grilling steaks. 
> I am afraid that I am not going to be grilling or cooking anything for several weeks. [Maybe for Easter.]
> So we did the simple lunch and supper this year of ham with some veggies. 
> We also have our traditional pannetoni, cookies, and brownies for munchies.
> Santa brought the Modernist Cuisine Photography book and Historic Heston.  
> 
> Johnnae